One of the boys

This is an extra letter tomy creativity coach Sarabecause I found the meaning of life, the key to success and in all likeliness the fountain of youth.
And I m making an effort to remember it, this time.

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Dear Sara,

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You once said that if I needed to write you an extra email, I could, so this is one of those.
Because I do.
And after this I may need tattoos, because it seems I keep forgetting and getting in my own way, regardless of how many times I find my balls and recognize myself in the devil.
Regardless of how many times I realize there is an aspect of yoga that I m allergic to.

I keep getting my ass into energetic trouble doing things that drain me.Things that suck the very soul out of me.Things that make me wish I was dead, and then I remember I have cats to take care of, so that it’s not an option.

And I do them all on repeat but the moment I discovered I even have them scheduled on my calendar;
That was the point I knew I something had to change..

This is not the first time, I focus on the things that are wrong and bad for me. It’s a circle I keep going round in until I have an epiphany and document it.
But I don’t come back to it often enough to prevent me from straying from the path, and spinning into another circle.
Maybe I should speak of a downward spiral, with the number of times I keep going round.
Meanwhile pinning reminders on the walls, to never do this again.

Or maybe reality is more complex and there are simply too many Cards Of Importance on my vision board, and that explains why I keep forgetting this one.The one that holds the key to my worldly success, my sex life and my sanity.

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Sara: I m one of the boys and, what I have come to understand as, female energy is unhealthy for me.

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I don’t know if I told you this but I do have female friends. Quite a lot of them. And I am absolutely blessed with THREE best female friends whom I talk to frequently!
And whom I would not miss for the world.
Just like I would not want to miss the others whom I see less frequently. So it seems contradictory. But guess what?With two of them, we always play we are boys!

We have boy’s names, and we talk in third person like Elmo from Sesame Street, but we use it in plural as well.So we’ll say: “Shall they meet in the city?” instead of “Shall we meet in the city?”
And we have a lot of words where we will incorporate the word he or him. For example “himself” is not a word in Dutch. If you refer to yourself in Dutch, you’re supposed to use a gender neutral word. Yet with these two friends we always say himself.
And Happy Birthday to him.
Goodnighthim.
Byebyehim.
And one of them will even refer to her husband as “(her boyish playname) HIS husband”, not “my husband” or using ‘s after their name.
There is always an extra his or him, whenever we can squeeze it it.
With these two friends there is no identification with the fact that we’re grown women, unless there are really serious conversations. And then we always go back to normal at the end of it.
We can’t possibly end on a serious note.

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And with the third friend we do not play that we’re boys but we’re both SO FULL ON, that any idea of us being domesticated ladies can go out of the window pronto.We share cunning plans and celebrate each other’s victories. We laugh so hard they can hear us three blocks further down the road.God, I can’t believe it took me this long to realize this, but;
I think we behave like men!

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So I have three friends I speak frequently.
With two we play we’re boys, and with one I behave like a man.And yet I have never felt I was born in the wrong body. I do have one pair of jeans that sometimes looks like I have a tiny penis.I do love that one! I think it rocks.So I don’t mind my own masculinity.But I don’t mind my own femininity either.Now that I think of it; I think I identify with my thoughts, with my mind, so fully, that I don’t really identify with my body.
I think it’s a super cool body, and I love it very much. But if it had been different, that would have been good too.
It doesn’t seem to need to reflect whatever gender-identification I feel on the inside. I have tried to imagine my body being a different gender (at multiple times in my life), and I have no reason to believe I would not have been okay with that too.

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However, when it comes to the gender of others, I seem to be A LOT less inclusive! Here a monomaniac preference for the male gender prevails, in every way.They can be men in whatever way they want, as long as they’re men.Gay, straight, bi. Eight years old to 80.All my cats have been male.
They can dress as women, or identify as women; It’s all good.It’s not even a sexual thing – and this can be a problem. Because what men can feel, is that our energies are a great match. But they assume that is because I have a personal interest in them. When in fact, what they’re feeling is an impersonal energy-exchange. It’s being able to have a good time together, because your bodies are energetically recharging from being in each other’s presence.That’s all (in most cases).

Now, naturally, there are men I am in love with, and that amplifies the amazing energy transition. It’s a fires through the roof kind of situation, and that is WITHOUT either one of us acknowledging it, being romantic or anything.
Without any of us implying anything else than just a bit of fun and, at at the same time, an entirely neutral conversation.And I know this deeper, more powerful exchange, is also something that is mutually felt. I bet my beautiful, elegant, imaginary penis for it, that he feels it too.
But the point is; It always happens.Whether I like the guy or not. Whether we’re the same age or not. Whether there is a sexual interest from my side, or not.There is always a deep understanding and appreciation of his masculinity.And with women:Never.

And if there is, we immediately adopt the behavioral patterns that belong to men interacting. Not women.

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How I identify myself seems to be entirely irrelevant to me.
There’s even room for a spontaneous gender switch, if I woke up a man one day.Yet I seem to be hyper-aware of other people’s energy.
It’s like that book Perfume of Patrick Susskind, where the killer has no scent, and he becomes obsessed with the scent of others.

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Anyway, anyway; This was all information that was at one point already known.And also not new; That before the C. crisis I wanted to go to work in a male-dominated environment. It was the big breakthrough on seeing why I would never be a happy working from home: It simply did not provide enough male energy.
I would never be happy working from home, unless home was an all-male student dorm.

And yet, WHAT did I plan, to be doing every day, in an imaginary schedule, towards which I felt far less affectionate than to my imaginary penis?

I planned eight hours of dull, draining work, every day. And all my fun, elevating work, should be done in my free time.It wasn’t called Dull versus Fun of course.
I certainly didn’t plan on telling a future employer: “Look! I already trained myself at doing 8 hours of dull work every day, so I can do your dull work as well!”
Nooooo….The eight hours of dull work were called “Working on my biz” , and the eight hours of things I would keep on doing after I start working for an employer, were all my writing and creative work.
With the exception of writing in Dutch under my real name; That was all Biz.
Because I knew I would no longer do it, as soon as I was pressing for time.
Just like I was never going to make Dutch yoga videos again, and maybe stop doing yoga altogether.
And yet – I didn’t plan doing my personal yoga under Biz hours! Even though it was clear that the (monetizable) yoga side of me, was the side strongest represented in “Biz”.
It still felt too luxurious…. because I knew how to make yoga fun.
Like listening to Bon Jovi music made it fun.
That explained why I didn’t dare scheduling doing yoga under “Biz”, despite running a yoga business.
The ugly, self-sabotaging face behind my work/leisure divide started to show.

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For the past months I have been “preparing” myself to be employable for a job as dull and draining as working from home really is to me!
Instead of creating a life that compares to having a job that is among men, and that gives me energy!

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I need to FLIP that entire schedule around, in order to prepare myself for future employment!!

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THIS IS MY WORK:– hang out with male friends, talk to my three besties, and all my other super fun female friends. Have fun, laugh, be energized. Talk to you!
(you were definitely under leisure)– write about men, write about Bon Jovi, do my 1995 Bon Jovi video project and my 1996 research project to their concert here in The Netherlands.– ALL THIS crazy, creative, fun LS HARTEVELD WRITING– yoga to Bon Jovi music, both to albums as well as live concerts. Woot woot!!!

And for when I’m thoroughly and completely satisfied and recharged from being among men, writing about men, and done doing yoga to rock music (men).
If I then feel all mellow and chill, then I have time to:– write about yoga– draw my cute Dutch cartoons– teach yoga– make Dutch yoga videos

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But I m not going to make a career out of it.

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the writer currently residing in 1995~Lauren/LS Harteveld

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You’re currently reading a post on my main site:I write here when I am LS Harteveld (or Lauren);
I write to Sara, and I keep my 1995 diary which is really awesome.To subscribe to these stories, look for the button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

And I don’t want to spell it out, but when I say “diary” I mean any story that involves balls or other genitals is posted here.I have spoken.